Woody Allen, Manhattan and the Art of Film

Some people don't like, or don't get Woody Allen and wonder why he is so revered. I think he can be brilliant. The films of his that I have liked, I have loved. Manhattan is one of my favorites. Yes, it is, as some might say, about "whiny aimless people with boring neuroses". That, I think, is part of the point. It has always fascinated me that the most mature, stable and intelligent character in it is the teenager played by Muriel Hemingway. The thing I find amazing about it, though, is that practically every shot is a work of art. This is the beginning, I think, of Allen's experimentation with cinematic technique, and it pays off handsomely. I think you could pull any one frame at random from the film and it would be composed brilliantly. And it is composed that way in order to tell the story, not as an end. I find directors that show off beautifully lit and angled shots often get in the way of the film. I find that often of Allen, actually, (take a look at the nausea inducing hand held camera work in Husbands and Wives) but not in Manhattan. In fact, Allen insisted that it be presented on television, VHS or DVD only in widescreen format to keep the integrity of the shots intact, the first (perhaps only?) film maker to ever do so.

And, yes, given that, most of his stories are about whiny aimless people with boring neuroses. I do recommend "Broadway Danny Rose," though, as a charming tribute to spunk. It is (very) loosely based on a real New York talent agent who actually had a roster much like the one portrayed in the film, an agent who took on the oddest of talent, but who believed in them and supported them beyond all reason. The real agent that it's based on had Andrew "Dice" Clay among his talent pool, but most of his acts were odd variety and specialty acts. I haven't seen it in a while, but remember being utterly charmed by it. It is told as a series of tales by actors and performers sitting around a table at a New York deli, trying to outdo each other telling "Danny Rose" stories, until one comes up with the ultimate tale. And there is one scene in a hanger full of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade floats that I remember as making me almost choke with laughter. Love and Death is also a good film; a fairly silly but intelligent comedy about Napoleon of all things.

Hannah and Her Sisters is another one that I liked a lot. Allen seemed to grow up in an odd way with that film. I mean Allen himself, not necessarily his art or film making. There seemed far less neurotic, juvenile behavior and the situations, characters and issues presented in it also seemed, somehow, more mature.

The latest by Allen, Match Point, surprised me. It was placed in London rather than New York, which everyone seems to think is the main point of departure and the most notable thing about the film, but it was other things about it that surprised me. It is unrelentingly nihilistic, I think, the whole point being that you win or lose completely by chance, by where the ball falls after it hits the top of the net, not by any endemic goodness or strength of character or act of redemption or even effort on your part. This seems to me to be the biggest point of departure from his other films. (And perhaps he needed to travel to London to make that departure.) Yes, his characters have often been obsessed with death (especially the characters he plays) and have been neurotic and frequently even selfish, but there has usually been an underlying goodness, even sweetness in all of his people. Even the animalistic brutes in Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy played by Jose Ferrer and Tony Roberts (what ever happened to him? He used to be the quintessential white bread foil for Allen) learn about the higher levels of love and human relationships by the end of the movie. The performances in Match Point are quite good (not unusual for Woody Allen, who has gotten the best performances ever from many of his actors) and the story is compelling, but his departure of mood and intent left me a bit cold.

There are so many other Allen films that I love (how could I not talk about Zelig or Purple Rose of Cairo, for goodness sake?) but they will have to wait for some future post. Anyway, I think Woody Allen is revered partly because he has experimented with the art of film making and brought it places other film makers haven't had the foresight or courage to go, partly because he tells compelling, interesting and unusual stories, partly because he gets such intimate performances, but mostly because there is simply no other film maker even remotely like him.

Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel "Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend".

Once Upon a Time in America and More

The following is part of an email conversation I had recently with my father, poet Rowell Hoff, who now lives in China with his wife, Carol.

Dad:

We watched, on recommendation of a friend, "Once Upon a Time in America", Sergio Leone's long movie about -- about what?? Me, I didn't like it at all. What should one think of a movie about four people, in reality only two; one of them (Max, the character played by Woods) a stone sociopath, another (Di Niro's character) in a sense worse, for he has some human sensibility and tenderness, which he invariably puts behind him in favor of criminality and nastiness in general, and ends up smiling on opium. And the directing: Feh, as you say. The perhaps comic in intention sequence about the police captain and his baby--not funny, just stupid. The scene in the empty-but-for-Niro-and-the-girl restaurant, a hundred waiters, an orchestra for Heaven's sake. The story of Max (the stone sociopath) who fakes his own death, takes the money and disappears for 30 years, during which time he becomes a U.S. cabinet member. Come on! And so on. Nobody in the story was worth a counterfeit Confederate dollar as a human being, except "Fat Moe". What was the message? Was there a message? Why did our friend like it? Why did Ebert like it? Leone should have stuck to spaghetti westerns. "Fistful of Dollars" was better (not good, but better than "Once Upon...", and mercifully shorter), and Eastwood's character, besides cleverly arranging for the massacre of most of the inhabitants of the town, who indeed were pretty bad persons, did at least one kind and self-sacrificing thing.

Me:

I saw Once Upon a Time in America shortly after it came out. When it was first released in the US, the studio re-arranged the narrative so it was told linearly and cut it down by (if I remember correctly) almost half its original length. I saw it when it came to cable and they showed both the theatrical release and the original cut. I remember being fairly in awe of the scope of the thing (I watched both versions and was appalled by the studio cut) and of what I remember as the very effective non-linear story telling. I love studying different ways of structuring a story, different ways to reveal the various threads in a story. (To see a really innovative narrative, and a really dark but quite good movie, see Momento. I warn you, it is very dark. It's sort of told backward, but only sort of. It had an odd, lingering effect on me. After leaving the theater, it was literally several hours before actual reality seemed to be real.) However, I also remember having had some problems with the story itself in Once Upon a Time. It's been a long time and I really don't remember much about the specifics - the points you bring up seem valid but none of them ring a bell - but I do have a vague recollection of being a little annoyed at the depiction of Jewish people in it.

As for why so many people liked it, first of all Americans have a strange love for gangsters and the "romance" of the gangster life. Second, it was beautifully filmed and acted, which I have said before can almost make up for any other flaw. Again, from memory because it has been so long since I've seen it, I think a lot of the absurd story elements you point out are actually impressionistic rather than stark realism - they are the musings in he mind of De Niro. Isn't it a lot about his looking back on his dark life? Also, a lot of films that have utterly reprehensible and unrepentant and unredeemable characters have had a lot of critical acclaim - take Raging Bull, a movie I really didn't like, but that I could see a lot of wonderful film making in. No one in that film has any saving grace at all. They're all complete a** holes from beginning to end, and the critics loved it.

Dad:

I am also happy with "non-linear" flicks, generally speaking. (What a good name for them!) Remember "Rashomon"? Although the technique was different, for a different purpose, really, and of course it grew out of the story by Akutagawa. (It is curious that the book of stories it came from had a story called "Rashomon" in it, but that was not the story that became the movie. I forget what the name of it was...) Zhang Yimou, in his "Hero", may have been thinking of "Rashomon" a little.

The most interesting and technically and artistically fascinating non-linear film lately -- that we have seen, anyway -- is Syriana.

Me:

Believe it or not, I've never seen Rashomon! I know a lot about it and it is ALWAYS referenced when someone is talking about a story told from different perspectives. It is one I've always wanted to see, mainly because of the story telling technique. I often don't like Akira Kurosawa and that's one reason I've not yet seen it even though it has so heavily influenced so many other things. My main problem with Kurosawa is that his movies are visually stunning but seem somehow soulless and emotionally empty. (I find that with a lot of Japanese art, actually. Odd, probably, given my birth in Tokyo.) That's probably a little unfair, I haven't seen more than a few of his movies, but there you have it.

As for non-linear films, the first one I saw actually radically changed the way I wrote. There is a movie made in the sixties with Julie Christie and George C. Scott called Petulia. I can't remember exactly when I saw it (probably when I was in high school, but it may have been even earlier), but it jumps around in time rather frenetically and it stunned me. You don't really completely know what is going on until the very last scene. I tried for many years to see it again (this is way before video - and I'm not even sure it's available on video in any case) without any success. Finally, several years ago now, I convinced an art house movie theater in LA to run it. I was thrilled. And very disappointed. It wasn't nearly as good as I had remembered. Of course, how could it be? I had credited it with changing how I approached storytelling and I consider myself a story teller, so it was like some sort of religious or transformational experience in my mind - a walk to the peak, a flight to heaven. What could live up to that? I'd actually like to see it again, now, with the perspective of a little maturity and not as great an expectation.

I have not yet seen Syriana - it is top on my list. I had wanted to see it before it left the movie theaters, but alas, I think I've missed it there. Ah well. I want to see it for any number of reasons; the movie making is supposed to be superb, the emotional impact is supposed to be extreme and I have come to really respect George Clooney. (Who knew! That guy who goofed his way through ER on TV is actually an amazing man. - Speaking of Clooney, see Good Night and Good Luck.)

Geoff Hoff is co-owner of Joseph Coaler Productions and, with Steve Mancini, co-wrote the satirical novel "Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend".